Wednesday, November 21, 2012

I just recently watched Holy Motors and felt a review was necessary. The movie instantly dives in without explanation and starts delivering one the most heart felt and strange movies I have ever seen. The main character Oscar begins by bringing us into his world of appointments and totally fragmented yet poignet take on characters and the lives they affect. It's not clear right away what the point of these appointments will be. We just get thrown into the situation he has been in many times before and are along for the ride and he is our chauffeur, which interestingly enough has his own chauffeur. This movie is one abstract thought after the next all brought to life by Oscar. Throughout you see him changing his makeup down to the smallest details and you see the dedication actors can have for their craft not only literally by Denis Lavant (Oscar) but by the character he plays. We see Oscar constantly putting on make up and diving into characters and spending time and energy doing so. He does it for the beauty of acting. He is here to perform for us because he loves doing it. It is the most intriguing aspect of the movie. Some lessons or thoughts thrown our way as the audience include: a man performing for us, the audience is asleep, reality and the unreal, having kids, getting old, losing love, weird trumps beauty, man with beast, punishment is being yourself, accepting death, everything is okay when you see the next generation will take over, cars talking, killing yourself or your clone, this is for our entertainment. So many times the movie speaks to a jaded movie goer it's clear this movie wants me to care about cinema again and for me to understand that I shouldn't take things for granted. There are often times something happens in the movie and I get nothing from it. Other times I get deep meanings that I haven't thought of before. I can only hope and imagine that the parts that did nothing for me do something for someone else. It's the classic thought of "well maybe he had a better idea" syndrome. You can't continue to do the same thing and doing something differently is knocking on the door of enlightenment. Bottom line is this: Holy Motors may not be fully appreciated by everyone but will garner new fans of cinema that will show them the rabbit hole cinema is and simply please the movie goers that have already "seen it all".

Monday, November 19, 2012

So here it is, 2 weeks later after Halo 4 launched. It's the best Halo to have ever been made. And quite frankly I was worried that this was going to be just more sequel b.s. and milk everyone for their hard earned dollars. 343 has picked up and evolved Halo in a direction I didn't think was going to happen. Let me talk about m 3 favorite features. Number 1: streamlined game replay and sharing. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 had quite a nice jump into getting people their replay footage but after awhile it wasn't worth the effort to get my footage. Halo give you a folder to store your stuff and a folder to share with everyone else. It's simply brilliant and simple. Number 2: 4 digit in game ID. I can't tell you how often in CODMW3 I would not get my headshot or get my head taken off because a team mate has a 29 digit gamer tag that shows up and takes up 40% of my screen. Halo maxes at 4 digits and keeps the heart of gameplay totally in tact. Number 3: graphics! It's soooo nice to see a jump in graphics in anything these days. Texture, lighting, and models have all pretty much been the same in COD since COD4. Halo finally takes the time out to improve everything. It is noticeably better and I appreciate every hour that went into making Master Chief look totally realistic with no aliasing, pixelation, or mapping lag. It gives me a little boost to see that if the graphics can and do improve then the next gen consoles will probably look pretty darn good. And if they don't, I'm sticking with my 360. It's also apparent to me that traditional controllers need to always be there. I have been using a d-pad and buttons since NES. I appreciate the creativeness that get injected into the motion controllers and cameras, but I've used them all and there is still nothing like a trusty rusty XBOX 360 controller. Although XBOX needs to get up on the d-pad game. They simply need to jack the PS3 d-pad. I can safely say at this point that Halo has won me back and away from COD and even Battlefield. It's amazing what can be done when you inject mechanics that work with a franchise that has history, compelling story, and style. And now a few images I like:

Saturday, November 17, 2012

I just finished watching episodes 1-4 of Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome. I have to say it's pretty darn exciting to see what young Bill Adama was like. I have read that this will only be a 10 episode web series. Hopefully this may trigger enough excitement to get another spin off series or continue on more with Blood And Chrome. The only issue I really see them running into is offering me more to learn or understand about humans and where we're heading. Battlestar Galactica already covered pretty much everything there is to know or offer about who we are and why we do the things we do. I would like an answer about Kara Thrace but I'll just stick to my own thoughts about her story at the end. Everything about Blood And Chrome is a continuation of what Battlestar Galactica started. The CG looks even better and the writing looks like it will continue in the same vein as well. I love this universe and often consider Battlestar Galactica to be the best TV Show ever made. So here's to hoping the new way they will be marketing Blood And Chrome is successful and we get more from the Battlestar Galactica Universe! So Say We All Mother Frakers!

Friday, November 16, 2012

I recently saw Skyfall in theaters and I have to say it's in the top 3 Bond movies of all time. It's a wonderful new direction to take James and gang. Skyfall has one of the greatest Bond villains of all time. After I thought about it I decided to go ahead make a Top 10 Bond Villains Of All Time. The only James Bond movie I haven't seen is Die Another Day.

10 Max Zorin

There's something so unsettling about a person who appears normal and is a ruthless killer underneath. Max Zorin is one of the strongest examples of this in the Bond franchise. Not only is he unnerving, but he's played by Christopher Walken.

9 Oddjob

A small man that kills people by throwing his hat at them. How much more crazy and off the wall can you get than this?

8 Le Chiffre

Bad ass modern bad guy who makes all the right moves except deciding to mess with James Bond.

7 Jaws

This character is even more ridiculous than Oddjob and even more iconic. Throwing in the love story in Moonraker makes Jaws an interesting Villain. He does what he's told but has a heart at the same time.

6 Red Grant

Classic Spy Espionage with Great Britain vs Russia, Sean Connery vs Robert Shaw. The fight between these two is so brutal and epic that it will forever remain a classic fight scene.

5 Goldfinger

"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"

4 Alec Trevelyan

Classic MI6 Agent goes rogue and tries to take out 007 in the process. Amazing fight between Sean Bean and Pierce Brosnan.

3 Dr. No

Think about this for a moment. This Doctor became so powerful and mad that he captured James Bond and just toyed with him over and over. The items mentioned about Max Zorin stand as the best example here.

2 Raoul Silva

Old and new is the name of the game for this Villain. He's a Cyber Terrorist which is the latest and greatest and at the same time totally twisted which is really a staple for James Bond Villains. He meets Bond's wit and then outdoes him at every turn until he decides it's time to end his own life more or less. So much struggle, anger, psychotic behavior, and mind games I have a hard time believing this is the same James Bond from the 70's that was basically like watching a cartoon (Roger Moore I'm looking at you). And then on top of it all it's hands down the best performance a Bond Villain has ever had. Javier Bardem fits Rauol Silva better than Heath Ledger fits the Joker, that's how good I thought it was.

1 Ernst Blofeld

The number 1 reason Blofeld is at the top of this list is that he is synonymous with James Bond. You take him away and you take away the history James Bond has shot his way through. He defined a new level of Bond Villain and forever holds one of the most iconic scenes in movie history; the classic camera set at his hands petting the cat while he talks and makes us wonder who this man is.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Just a quick rant about the limits of the iPod music quality it can output. Straight up it can only output at 24bit/44.1kHz. There are so many lossless audio files out there that are way higher than 44.1kHz. I have Led Zeppelin vinyl rip FLAC's that are 192kHz and damn it there should be a way to listen to them via my iPod so I can take it to my car and headphones. I'm no Audio Engineer and if there is something greater than 24/192 I suggest we just max it out right now and match whatever the highest quality is that gets mixed at and make it available. And... give me a high capacity iPod or let iCloud stream ALAC or something... give me some way to enjoy 100% pure music. Sheesh... gotta get by with this b.s. 24/44.1 for now. Rant over.

An amazing day for music would be the day when we see Apple streaming ALAC (Apple Lossless) from the iCloud, Google streaming FLAC (Open Source Lossless) from the Play Store, and Microsoft streaming WAV (Windows Lossless) from XBOX Music. But right now we're stuck with 320kbps mp3's for Google, 256kbps for Apple, and 320kbps mp3's for Microsoft as well. Of course I don't imagine a high volume of people taking notice to this issue. After all there are still people that say the can't hear the difference between their cassette tape and vinyl.

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